The Eyes of the Dragon

The crystal had grown hotter and hotter. If he did not allow it to go dark soon, it would split apart forever, Flagg knew, and magic crystals were not easy to come by-it had taken thirty years of searching to find this one. But he would see it broken into a billion pieces before he gave up.

“This is my command!” he repeated again, and for the third time, the milkiness of the crystal drew inward. Flagg bent over it until its heat made his eyes water and gush tears. He slitted them… and then, in spite of the heat, they flew open wide in shock and fury.

It was Peter. Peter was slowly descending the side of the Needle. Surely this was some treacherous magic, because, although he was making hand-over-hand motions, there was no rope to be seen

Or… was there?

Flagg waved a hand in front of his face, dissipating the heat for a moment. A rope? Not exactly. But there was something… something as gossamer as a strand of spiderweb… and yet it bore his weight.

“Peter,” Flagg breathed, and at the sound of his voice, the tiny figure looked around.

Flagg blew on the crystal and its bright, wavering light went out. He saw its afterglow in front of his eyes as he sat in the dark.

Peter. Escaping. When? It had been night in the crystal, and Flagg had seen errant, gritty sheaves of snow blowing past the tiny figure working its way down the rounded wall. Was it to be later tonight? Tomorrow night? Sometime next week? Or

Flagg pushed back from his desk and stood up with a lurch. His eyes filled with fire as he looked around his dark and stinking basement rooms.

–or had it happened already?

“Enough,” he breathed. “By all the gods that ever were and ever will be, this is enough.”

He strode across the darkened room and seized a huge weapon that hung on the wall. It was clumsy, but he held it with ease and familiarity. Familiar with it? Yes, of course he was! He had swung it many times when he had lived here and done business as Bill Hinch, the most feared executioner Delain had ever known. This terrible blade had bitten through hundreds of necks. Above the blades, which were of twice-forged Anduan steel, was Flagg’s own modification-a spiked iron ball. Each spike had been tipped with poison.

“ENOUGH!” Flagg screamed again in a fury of rage and frustration and fear. The two-headed parrot, even in the depths of its unconsciousness, moaned at that sound.

Flagg pulled his cloak from the hook by the door, swept it over his shoulders, and fastened the clasp-a hammered-silver scarab beetle-at his throat.

It was enough. This time his plans would not be thwarted, certainly not by one hateful boy. Roland was dead, Peyna unbenched, the nobles driven into exile. There was no one to raise an outcry over one dead prince… especially one who had murdered his own father.

If you have not escaped, my fine prince, you never will-and something tells me you’re still in the coop. But part of you WILL leave tonight, I promise you that-that part I intend to carry out by the hair.

As he strode down the corridor toward the Dungeon Gate, Flagg began to laugh… a sound which would have given a stone statue bad dreams.

114

Flagg’s intuition was right. Peter had finished going over his rope of twisted linen fibers, but he was still in his tower room, awaiting the Crier’s a

The Dungeon Gate was on the northeast side of the Needle. On the southwest side was a little castle entrance known as the Peddlers’ Gate. A straight diagonal line could have been drawn between the Dungeon Gate and the Peddlers’ Gate. At the exact midpoint of that line was the Needle itself, of course.

At almost the same time that Flagg came out of the Dungeon Gate, Ben, Naomi, De

Ben and his party reached the Needle first.

“Now-” Ben began, and at that moment, from the other side, less than forty paces around the outside perimeter from where they now stood, Flagg began to hammer on the triple-bolted Warders’ Door.

“Open!” Flagg screamed. “Open in the name of the King!”

“What-” De

115

The voice came spiraling up to Peter on the cold post-storm air. It was faint, that voice, but perfectly clear.

“Open in the name of the King!”

Open in the name of hell, you mean, Peter thought.

The good brave boy had become a good brave man, but when he heard that hoarse voice and remembered that narrow white face and those reddish eyes, always shadowed by the hood of his robe, Peter’s bones turned to ice and his stomach to fire. His mouth went as dry as a wood chip. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. His hair stood on end. If someone has ever told you that being good and being brave means you will never be afraid, what that someone told you is not so. At that moment, Peter had never been so afraid in his whole life.

It’s Flagg, and he’s come for me.

Peter got up and, for a moment, he thought he was going to simply fall over as his legs buckled under him. Doom was down there, hammering at the Warders’ Door to be let in.

“Open up! On your feet, you licey drunken buggers! Beson, you son of a sot!”

Don’t hurry, Peter told himself. If you hurry you’ll make a mistake and do his work for him. No one’s come to let him in yet. Beson’s drunk-he was oddly at supper and probably paralyzed by the time he got to bed. Flagg hasn’t a key or he wouldn’t be wasting time knocking. So… one step at a time. Just as you pla

He went into his bedroom and pulled out the rough iron cotter pins that held the crude bedframe together. The bed collapsed. Peter grabbed one of the iron side-bars and carried it back into the sitting room. He had measured this bar carefully and knew it was wider than his window, and while its outer surface was rusted, he thought it was strong yet through the middle. It had better be, he thought. It would be a bitter joke indeed if my rope held but my anchor broke.

He looked out briefly. He could see no one now, but he had observed three figures crossing the Plaza toward the Needle shortly before Flagg’s wild pounding had begun. De

“Oh, you dogs! Open this door! Open it in the King’s name! Open it in the name of FLAGG! Open the door! Open-”

In the stillness of almost midnight, Peter heard the rattle-thud of the wrist-thick iron bolts far below being drawn back. He supposed the door opened, but he didn’t hear that. Silence…

… and then a gurgling, choked scream.